A Majestic Imperial Chinese Saga Has Its Premiere at the Met

The First Emperor Tan Duns new opera, with Plácido Domingo in the title role as a third century B.C. Chinese ruler, with sets by Fan Yue and costumes by Emi Wada, continues through Jan. 25 at the Metropolitan Opera House.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The relative rarity of world premieres at the Metropolitan Opera does not alone explain the buildup of good will, genuine excitement and high expectation over “The First Emperor,” the opera by the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun, which had its premiere on Thursday night, conducted by the composer.

Over the years Mr. Tan has drawn new audiences to classical music with eclectic works that find common ground between Asian traditions and the avant-garde. His ferociously propulsive film score for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” won him both an Oscar and a pop-culture following. Zhang Yimou, the Chinese director of this production, best known for his popular film “House of Flying Daggers,” also adds luster to the project. And Plácido Domingo, by taking on the title role, the first role he has created in his 38 years at the Met, contributes his formidable star power.

The story of the opera, based on incidents from the life of Qin Shi Huang, the prince and warlord who unified China through the brutal conquest of other states and became the country’s first emperor, is timely and psychologically complex. That all nine performances are essentially sold out is good news for the Met, for contemporary music and for opera over all. My guess is that a large number of the ticket-holders are opera neophytes attracted by the novelty of this project and hoping for a grand theatrical experience.

Still, music drives the theatrical experience of opera, and Mr. Tan’s score is an enormous disappointment, all the more so because whole stretches of it, and many arresting musical strokes, confirm his gifts.

The opera, with a libretto in English by Mr. Tan and Ha Jin, begins hauntingly with sounds of the East. Muffled drums and the humming drone of the waterphone (a bowed instrument with a bowl full of water) seem to come from the beyond, as low tremolos and a slinky melody emerge from the strings. The Yin-Yang Master (Wu Hsing-Kuo), singing in the style of Beijing opera, with nasal tone and vocal slides, takes us back 2,000 years to introduce the story of the emperor, who has roused his army and the people of Qin (pronounced chin) to conquer their neighbors and ward off barbarians. A row of 12 costumed palace musicians playing enormous Chinese drums thwack out pummeling rhythms as the riled-up choristers, the people of Qin, ask in chilling outbursts who their next victims will be.

The musical problems start shortly after Mr. Domingo appears, in the regalia of the emperor, and calls for the people to desist in their savage cries. He now controls the most feared army in the land and is bent on wiping out cultural differences in the conquered regions of China. What his nation needs is a stirring musical anthem to foster unity, he explains, in the opera’s first flight into lyricism.

But Mr. Tan’s approach to operatic lyricism and vocal writing seems ill-conceived. In preparing this work, he drew on his studies of ancient Chinese folk music, filtering those styles through techniques learned by attending almost every opera the Met produced during his years in New York, starting with his days as a graduate student and a fledgling professional musician. He wanted “The First Emperor” to sing, like the Italian operas he and countless other buffs adore.

His music does sing. And sing. And sing. On and on. Whatever the mood of the moment, whether dreamy, defiant, sensual or tragic, as soon as the characters break into song, the melodic lines are inevitably long, arching and slow. Even when the orchestra bustles with intensity, the often cloying vocal lines hovering above still move with almost unvarying deliberateness. In the Italian operas Mr. Tan has in mind — say, Puccini’s “Turandot” — the pacing of vocal lines accords with the impetuosity of the moment and the flow of the words. Mr. Tan’s goal in this work, it would seem, was to create a ritualistic and hypnotic lyricism. But “The First Emperor” gives soaring melody a bad name.

Photo

Plácido Domingo as the man who created the Chinese empire and whose influence on China is still felt today.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Also, because Mr. Tan integrates Chinese melodic elements into the music, the vocal lines continually move by wide and sometimes awkward leaps to unusual notes, making the phrases tiring for the singers. There is undeniable artistry at work in all this. Playing through these passages on the piano (from the piano-vocal score), I found some of Mr. Tan’s exotic harmonies and elusive vocal lines enticing. But a little of this goes a long way.

Between the scenes of ruminative lyricism come orchestral passages that are much more inventive and effective. Take, for example, the crucial third scene of Act I. Emperor Qin has implored Gao Jianli, his estranged childhood friend and a gifted musician, to compose the unifying anthem. But Gao Jianli, whose mother was killed when his homeland was conquered by the emperor, is full of bitterness and resists. Princess Yueyang, the emperor’s willful and alluring daughter, has fallen for Gao Jianli, even though she is pledged to the emperor’s right arm, General Wang. In this scene, the princess slowly seduces Gao Jianli, who cannot resist her.

And slowly is the operative word. The expansive lyricism begins enticingly but soon turns saccharine and, worse, inert. Yet when the singers depart, the orchestra, vividly enriched with Chinese instruments, takes up their themes and processes them through thick, spiky, grippingly astringent harmonies. Would that there were more such moments in the opera. The choral ensembles are also powerful and harmonically bracing, including the crucial final anthem, in which Gao Jianli, defying the emperor, recycles a mournful slave song. The more “The First Emperor” sounds like “Crouching Tiger” the better; the more it sounds like updated “Turandot,” the more tedious it becomes.

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The Met has spared no expense in mounting this $2 million co-production with the Los Angeles Opera. The set by Fan Yue is dominated by stairs through which you can sometimes glimpse colored banners and assembled masses. Descending from ropes above the stage is an intricate network of stones, representing both the writing tablets on which the emperor codified the Chinese language and the blocks of the Great Wall, with which his name is associated. Emi Wada has created 400 wildly colored costumes.

You have to admire the cast members for their willingness to grapple with this unconventional new work, though the demands of the wide-ranging vocal lines were evident in some tired-sounding singing. As Gao Jianli, the tenor Paul Groves summoned ardor and energy. The agile coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral made a kittenish and sensual Princess Yueyang. The charismatic mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung was mostly wasted as the long-fingered, ominous Shaman, a rather campy role. The mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer brought dignity to the smaller role of the princess’s mother, and the sturdy bass Hao Jiang Tian was a stern General Wang.

And give credit to Mr. Domingo, who at nearly 66 is still ambitious, still taking chances and challenging himself. He mostly sang with stamina and burnished power. True, his best friend onstage often seemed to be the experienced prompter, Donna Racik, invisible to the audience but quite often the focus of Mr. Domingo’s attention. And though the role was written for him, he could not disguise the effort involved in singing it. Despite his trouble with top notes in recent years, Mr. Domingo’s voice sounded freshest when the lines took him into his still clarion upper range. The man takes on too much. But what a major artist!

With one intermission, the opera lasted just 3 hours 20 minutes yet seemed much longer. In the final scene, the emperor’s inauguration — after his daughter has taken her own life (in what may be the longest farewell aria in opera, which is saying something), and after his general has been poisoned by Gao Jianli, who then mutilates himself by biting off his own tongue to spite the emperor — Mr. Domingo breaks one final time into lofty flights of ponderously arching lyricism. Listening, you cannot help thinking, “Oh, no, not again.”

A version of this review appears in print on , on Page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: A Majestic Imperial Chinese Saga Has Its Premiere at the Met. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe